{News Update: This page continues to garner visitors from around the
world. Mr. Weiner continues the same sort of hate speech that he unleashed
in our situation now 10 years ago. Whatever your reason for stopping by,
know that this site stands for free speech-until it is used to diminish,
or potentially bring harm to another person.

The audiotapes of Mr. Weiner's 1999 comments have been uncovered and
will be released in a nod to the 10-year anniversary of the time mr. adversarial
was forced to chicken out on an apology to some schoolgirls}

[Dartanyan is a former teacher and Technology
Director at The Branson School in Ross, CA. What follows is
a first person-perspective news article about very real
events. The story below is the personal experience of the
reporter. The statements included are exactly as they came
from the people quoted. Only by exposure can hate speech in
all of its forms be uncovered and eradicated. -The
editors-January 2000 - updated links July 1,
2003]

Ross, CA.-- An apology from Bay Area talk show host
Michael Savage, scheduled to be given to the students of a
Marin County high school, was derailed Friday December 10
when an alleged misunderstanding about the age and number of
the meetings' attendees caused the talk show host to duck
out on the meeting at the last minute.

Savage intimated in a broadcast on Disney-owned KSFO-FM,
that the possibility of forcible rape was a reason why
female high school students might find it exciting to feed
homeless people in San Francisco's inner city.

An apology for Savage's sexually improper comments was
negotiated during a meeting October 5 between (then) Branson
teacher and parent Dartanyan Brown, KSFO President Micheal
Luckoff and Operations Manager Jack Swanson. According to
Brown, the meeting held at the Front street offices of
ABC-TV in San Francisco, was a cordial one with Luckoff
offering his personal apology to Brown for any problems
caused by Savage's comments.

Brown, pointed out, however that a direct apology from
Mr. Savage to the students whose reputation's were slandered
was in order. At that point, Luckoff and Swanson agreed to
bring Savage to a meeting with students and three or four
other Branson staff members.

Savage, and station president Michael Luckoff later
canceled the agreed upon apology/discussion when they found
out more than one adult would be present.

Savage Suggests Sexual Contact between Students,
homeless

On his September 21, 1999 broadcast, while voicing his
contempt for San Francisco's homeless and the efforts to
help them, Savage, a long time Bay Area radio personality,
said that female students who come from a Marin County
private school to feed and provide services to the homeless
"can go in and get raped by them because they seem to like
the excitement of it..." These and other comments suggesting
sexual activity between homeless people and minor students
were peppered throughout the three-hour broadcast.

Savage's comments were heard by a teacher at the school
who monitors the program and, who subsequently obtained a
taped transcript to review what had really been said.

"What I heard was so shocking and wrong, I felt compelled
to first, see if what I heard was true, and if so, to do
something about the extreme hate, intolerance and Nazi-like
lying that was being broadcast over public airwaves."

Attempts by two teachers at the school to reach Mr.
Savage immediately following the show were deflected by the
show's producer and Savage never attempted to contact the
school to apologize for his comments. According to Brown,
calling Savage while on-air during his daily broadcast would
be inappropriate.

"That sort of thing is what they want. They really feed
upon negative energy" said one teacher. "It seems that the
whole purpose of programs like his are to make listeners so
angry that they call in just to argue the usually, racist,
sexist, homophobic or class warfare-type language which even
the host may not believe in. [According to both Luckoff
and Swanson, Savage's brand of 'cutting edge' radio was
necessary for ratings success.]

A letter of protest, signed by teachers at the school,
was sent to the radio station in early October. The letter
was responded to by Jack Swanson, operations manager at KSFO
who, after reviewing the tape, agreed with the teacher that
"indeed, Mr. Savage's comments were well over the line of
acceptability."

Meeting Scheduled

Swanson, scheduled an October 15 meeting at ABC studios
in San Francisco where Brown would meet with Luckoff and
Swanson but not Savage.

[Comments about the conduct of the meeting will be
covered in a sidebar to come later]

The meeting which lasted about an hour, began with both
Luckoff and Swanson apologizing for Savage's on-air
statements. The sincere but limited apology stopped far
short of any but the most cursory admonishment to Michael
Savage to not repeat the incident. There was a clear
implication, according to this reporter, that with
advertising revenues being so strong, there was no way they
were going to do anything to Michael Savage. They didn't
think he personally should have to answer for his
actions--and thus far he hasn't

[The night before the meeting, Savage was heard,
in fact, offering daughter-rape by homeless people as the
only way some people would awaken to the homeless problem .
Savage is doing what racists used to do arousing white fears
about African-Americans integrating white
society--editor]

Agreement then Misunderstanding

A decision was made for Luckoff and Savage to come to the
school to apologize to the students and staff. There was an
agreement for the radio station personnel to come to Branson
to meet with "up to ten students' and a limited number of
staff and other members of the Branson community.

There was no further communication between the radio
station and the school until a fax from Mr. Luckoff's office
dated December 6 was received by the teacher on Tuesday
December 7. The fax contained a message warning that if
there was no contact between the parties, to clear up the
matter of who would be in attendance at the meeting, the
apology session would have to be postponed or canceled.

[What follows is an account of the final flurry of
communication which resulted in Savage's refusal to
apologize..the editors]

"When I saw that fax," said the teacher, "I knew they
must have decided that a public apology was not in their
best interest and that they would look for the tiniest
loophole in order to avoid coming to our campus to apologize
and discuss the issues with us."

In response to the fax, a call was made to KSFO by the
teacher confirming the original attendance figures. Nothing
was resolved that day by phone but a fax,
arrived late the evening before the meeting saying that
because that we had "changed the rules" of the meeting, they
would have no choice but to cancel it--forever.

"A quick call to Mr. Luckoff yielded no softening of
KSFO's position that we had changed the rules of the
meeting." said the teacher. "It was confusing because there
were no specific concerns voiced by Mr. Luckoff as to what
they were afraid of, or what might go wrong by coming to our
campus, meeting our students and clearing up this problem
that their employee caused."

" I suppose they felt that we might ambush them in some
way but there were no other media and no other adults other
than teachers. I have no idea what they found so threatening
in this situation."

Lessons Learned

In the face of this disappointment, teachers and students
at the Branson campus were optimistic about the immediate
future and lessons to be learned from the incident.

"We made extra effort to restrain our anger and remain
thoughtful in the face of some pretty inaccurate and hurtful
information," said the teacher. "KSFO has served up all of
this hateful, obscene imagery with no apology directly to
our students, no public apology on the air for defaming our
students to thousands of listeners and now they refuse to
honor a simple commitment they made to us under the pretense
of a very flimsy excuse. We certainly are not going to ruin
our holidays thinking about these folks but in the new year,
I'm sure the best solution will emerge."

"Our students were prepared to dialog in an adult fashion
and they had some interesting questions to ask about the
media and it's effect on the community. I don't think those
questions are going to go away just because Michael Savage
was afraid to talk to a room with a few people over 30 in
it."